The incident described below seemed to mark the beginning of the sectarian violence that is taking place within Iraq today. 

The Askari bombing occurred at al-Askari Mosque in the Iraqi city of Samarra, on February 22, 2006, at about 6:55 a.m. local time. The explosion at the mosque, one of the holiest sites in Shi'a Islam, is believed to have been caused by bombs planted by Al-Qaeda in Iraq. Although no injuries occurred in the blast, the mosque was severely damaged and the bombing resulted in violence over the following days. Over 100 dead bodies with bullet holes were found on February 23, and at least 165 people are thought to have been killed.^[

The mosque is located some 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Baghdad, the capital.

The bombing

On February 22, 2006, at 6:55 a.m. (0355 UTC), explosions occurred at al-Askari Mosque, effectively destroying its golden dome and severely damaging the mosque. Several men, one wearing a military uniform, had earlier entered the mosque, tied up the guards there and set explosives, resulting in the blast. Two bombs were set off by five to seven men dressed as personnel of the Iraqi Special forces who entered the shrine during the morning.

No injuries were reported following the bombing. However, the northern wall of the shrine was damaged by the bombs, causing the dome to collapse and destroying three-quarters of the structure along with it.

Following the blast, American and Iraqi forces surrounded the shrine and began searching houses in the area. Five police officers responsible for protecting the mosque were taken into custody.

While a Friday curfew and appeals for restraint by religious leaders across Iraq appeared to have prevented any major outbreak of violence on Friday, in contrast to the incidents that reportedly took more than 130 lives and damaged or destroyed nearly 200 Sunni mosques on Wednesday and Thursday, experts warned that it was far too early to exhale.

Responsibility and accusations

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack on the mosque.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq

Although Al-Qaeda in Iraq denied any involvement in statements released. In June 2006, it was reported that Iraqi commandos and troops had captured and seriously wounded Yousri Fakher Mohammed Ali, a Tunisian also known as Abu Qudama al-Tunesi, after he and 15 other foreign fighters stormed an Iraqi checkpoint 25 miles north of Baghdad, according to Iraqi National Security Adviser Mouwafak al-Rubaie.

Abu Qudama confessed to taking part in the attack on al-Askari mosque in Samarra and gave a detailed account of how the attack took place. Al-Rubaie said Iraqi security forces have yet to capture the mastermind of the mosque attack, Haitham al-Badri, an Iraqi and leader of one of Al Qaeda in Iraq's cells. Al-Rubaie said al-Badri, Abu Qudama, four Saudi nationals and two other Iraqis stormed the mosque Feb. 21, rounded up the shrine's guards, members of Iraq's Facility Protection Service, and bound their hands. The group then spent the rest of the night rigging the mosque with bombs. At dawn the next day, they detonated the explosives, bringing down the dome.

In an August 2006 press conference U.S. President George W. Bush stated "it's pretty clear -- at least the evidence indicates -- that the bombing of the shrine was an Al Qaida plot, all intending to create sectarian violence. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had openly stated one of his goals was to incite a civil war between Iraq's Shiites and Sunnis.

In September 2006, Iraqi officials announced the capture of Hamid Juma Faris Jouri al-Saeedi in connection with the bombing, allegedly done on his orders by Haitham al-Badri.

USA and Israel

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed the United States and Israel for the attack. He claimed that "these heinous acts are committed by a group of Zionists and occupiers that have failed." He warned, amid a crowd of protesters, that the United States would "not be saved from the wrath and power of the justice-seeking nations" by resorting to bombings like the one that occurred at Al Askari Mosque.

According to alertnet, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, speaking from the Lebanese capital, Beirut, echoed the opinions of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and accused the United States of attacking the mosque to cause tension between the Sunnis and Shi'ites in the Middle East.

The Majlis Shura Al-Mujahideen (Mujahideen Shura Council) have issued a statement explicitly accusing Ibrahim Al-Jaafari's "government and [his] troops, in coordination with Iran". Other factions within the insurgency have issued similar statements.

Violent actions

Shi'ites protest following the bombing at Al Askari Shrine. As a result of the bombing, a great amount of violence broke out throughout Iraq. The Sunni Clerical Association of Muslim Scholars has said that, as of February 23, 2006, 168 Mosques had been attacked. They also stated that ten imams had been murdered and fifteen others kidnapped since the attack on the Samarra Shrine. The Shi'ite controlled Interior Ministry said it could only confirm figures for Baghdad, where it had reports of 19 mosques attacked, one cleric murdered and one abducted.

February 22 (Wednesday)

In Najaf, shops were closed, while residents gathered at the city's 1920 Revolution Square for demonstrations. In Al Diwaniyah, all mosques, shops and markets were closed.

Three Sunni Muslim clerics were shot and murdered by Shi'ite terrorists after Al-Askari bombing.

February 23 (Thursday)

Up to twenty one mosques were attacked in reprisals for the bombing. Three mosques were completely destroyed by explosives.

In the mainly Shia city of Basra, armed men in police uniforms seized eleven Sunni Muslim men, including some Saudi, Turkish and Egyptian nationals, from the Mina prison. The seized men were later found murdered and were believed to have been tortured. Ninety reprisal attacks on Mosques are reported.Iraqi Kurdish Sunni President Jalal Talabani has warned that Iraq is now on the brink of civil war.

Shia terrorists murdered 47 Muslim and Christian civilians and left their bodies in a ditch near Baghdad on Thursday. All of the bodies had their hands bound together.

Three journalists, including Atwar Bahjat, working for Al-Arabiya television were kidnapped and murdered while covering the bombing. Their bodies were found on the outskirts of Samarra. The journalist and her crew were Sunni Muslims.

February 24 (Friday)

Baghdad was relatively calm on Friday, despite reports of minor clashes between members of a Shia militia and armed men in the south of the city. In Basra, where the curfew was not in effect, on Friday armed men kidnapped three children of a Shia legislator who is a prominent member of the Shi'ite Dawa Party. In the city of Madain (Ctesiphon), two rockets struck the tomb of Salman the Persian, causing damage but no casualties.

February 25 (Saturday)

Fierce sectarian violence erupted anew on Saturday despite an extraordinary daytime curfew, killing more than two dozen people in a series of incidents around the country, including a brazen attack on the funeral procession of an Iraqi television journalist Atwar Bahjat. The violence took place even though a daytime curfew emptied the streets of Baghdad and three neighboring governorates for a second day. The government has extended the daylight security clampdown with a ban on cars on Monday morning. The overnight curfew is still in effect.

According to KarbalaNews.net and Juan Cole, guerrillas blew up a Shiite shrine in Bashir, south of Tuz Khurmato. 20 guerrillas attacked the shrine of Salman the Persian. They killed the guards and placed explosives at the tomb, then blew it up, destroying it.

February 26 (Sunday)

Five days of violence have left more than 200 dead and many mosques smashed, despite daytime curfews on Baghdad and surrounding provinces. There were further ominous signs of the "cleansing" of once mixed neighbourhoods in and around Baghdad. Scores of Shia families were reported to have fled homes in the restive western Muslim suburb of Abu Ghraib. Shia community leaders said they were being housed temporarily in schools and other buildings in Shia areas. In the latest round of attacks, a bomb destroyed a minibus as it was leaving a bus station in the mostly Shia town of Hilla, 60 miles south of Baghdad, killing five people and wounding three.

February 27 (Monday)

According to Aljazeera, the Iraqi government said that since the bombing in Samarra last Wednesday 379 people had been killed and 458 wounded. However, the Baghdad morgue confirmed that it had only received 309 bodies since Wednesday, most victims of violence. Morgue data showed this was double the average - it handled 10,080 bodies in 2005.

Religion, sometimes, is a continuation of politics by other means. Growing Shi‘a-Sunni tensions in the Middle East provide further proof this is so.  Politics, not theology, was at the root of the Shi‘a-Sunni split to start with.

The Prophet Muhammad was both a religious and political leader, and he left no clear heir. Shi‘a argued that leadership should be reserved to members of the Prophet Muhammad’s family. Sunnis argued that it should be the most capable among the leadership, regardless of parentage.

Doctrinal differences have emerged since—having to do with things such as the assessment of charitable responsibilities, inheritance laws, the position of one’s hands during prayer, and other practical issues—but those differences came after the schism.

Politics created the Shi‘a-Sunni split, not theology. Through history, populations have flipped back and forth between Sunni and Shi‘a Islam.

The world’s leading Shia state, Iran, was largely Sunni until Shah Ismail I proclaimed Shi‘a Islam the state religion of Persia in 1501. Scholars see Ismail’s move as purely political. Until then, Persia was a geographic entity, not a political one. It bordered the Ottoman Empire, which was both the seat of the Sunni caliphate and an awesome political and military force.

Shi‘ism was an instrument through which Ismail sought to distinguish his domains from those of the Ottomans. His subjects quickly got the message. Populations embraced Shi‘ism en masse, serving their own immediate political needs as well as the broader ones of the state. Shi‘a Islam unified Persia, giving the country a kind of political coherence that it had

lacked until then. So it has been, before and since. Sectarian identity has been a marker of difference and a sign of loyalty. At the same time, sectarian identity has been held up as a sign of disloyalty.

In modern Iraq, Sunnis sometimes refer to the Shi‘a majority of the country as Safavids, after the empire Ismail established. The slur is meant to suggest that Shi‘a loyalty is to Iran rather than to Iraq.

Sunni majorities in the Arab states of the Gulf (and the Sunni minority of Bahrain) often accuse the Shi‘a in their midst of being a fifth column—agents of Iranian influence against the interests of their homeland.

It is here that the reality of the Shi‘a-Sunni split becomes clearer. The issue is not so much Shi‘ism as it is Arab fear of Iranian influence.

Iran looms large for any number of reasons. It is a massive state with almost 70 million citizens, dwarfing countries such as Iraq with some 26 million and Saudi Arabia with perhaps 22 million, to say nothing of countries such as Kuwait with just over a million. Its military dwarfs that of its neighbors. It is a country with a rich tradition of history, art, literature and culture that stretches back thousands of years. For centuries Iranians disdained the Arabs of their south and west with the epithet “lizard eaters,” suggesting that the Arabs are both impoverished and uncultured.

What is perhaps most distressing is that Iran is a former empire with a long history of regional dominance. As one Gulf leader told me in January, “Iran has been Shia for only four centuries, but it has been Persian for millennia.”

Britain mediated the Arab-Iranian rivalry for 150 years, starting in the early nineteenth century. Then in the mid-twentieth century, the United States managed the conflict by supporting both sides.

The “Twin Pillars” strategy that the United States pursued in the Gulf brought the United States close to both the Shah’s Iran and Saudi Arabia, relying on both as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the area.

The Iranian revolution in 1979 ejected the United States as a referee; Arab states soon lined up behind Saddam Hussein’s Iraq as a necessary balance against Iranian influence in the Gulf, and they threw themselves even more tightly into anAmerican embrace.

With Iraq gone as a balancer, some now see Iran as unfettered in its bid for regional dominance. Many states in the region fear a U.S.-led war against Iran on their doorstep, but they also fear what an unconstrained Iran could do to coerce its neighbors.

For its part, Iran has not made these states more comfortable. Part of the Iranian strategy in the region appears to be to reach into local politics to strengthen Shi‘a populations.

There is scant political participation in most places in the Gulf, but where there issuch participation, Shi‘a are underrepresented. Socially and economically, Shi‘a communities are more marginalized, less educated, and poorer.

It is not surprising that as Iran seeks to expand its regional reach, it would reach out toward coreligionists; neither is it surprising that Shi‘a across the region would welcome whatever outside support they could get.

Whatever the religious rhetoric (and that rhetoric has been remarkably heated), this is basically a political struggle over money and power—the sorts of political struggles that have existed for millennia.

Antagonists battle using a religious vocabulary, but that vocabulary obscures the nature of the dispute rather than illuminates it.

Exerpted from Center for Strategic & International Studies, "Middle East Notes and Comments, March 2007 issue. 

An American Police Officer in Iraq